Sunday, August 3, 2014

Grand Tour of California Day 2: A taste of Europe.

We had intended on driving up the 5 to start our trip up the coast until.....I saw my "aunt" Linda's post that my second cousin Kevin's mission homecoming was the previous day.... I love this family to pieces! Not only are they responsible for my treasured only experience at Lake Powell but they have been my cheerleader through it all. I love them so much. Anyway, so badly I wanted to surprise them at Kevin's homecoming... but that didn't work out but I figured it was better late than never! And even better....

these guys were there too!!!!!

Owen and Jerrie have been like grandparents to me. I love to pieces. So anyway, they live in Moorpark so we decided to drive straight through LA and through North Hollywood for Jason to see the Hollywood sign for possibly the first time ever....

It wouldn't be LA with a good taste of traffic.

to visit the Barkers. The visit was WAY too short with WAY too much to talk about. But hopefully we'll be seeing them soon!

Excuse the dirty window......... one of my favorite parts of the trip was seeing the actual farming that takes place in California! I LOVED the fields of grapes (seen below), strawberries, lettuces, almonds, citrus, and the one that confused me for the longest time, artichokes!

Then we were off to Solvang.... which I thought was a Danish community.

You can imagine my confusion when we got there and saw windmills...

and wooden shoes..... very Dutch... not Danish. But I think I decided it was Norwegian, Danish, German, and Dutch settlement? Either way........ it was an European DREAM!!!!

Darling Bavarian houses everywhere.

OH and the Danishes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the Hans Christian Anderson Museum.....

and of course a replica of the Little Mermaid Statue....

Did I mention the Danishes???????

Sadly..... we were SO full from the amazing lunch and German Chocolate Cake at the Barkers that all we got was a hard roll...... It reminded me exactly of what I ate every. single. morning. when my family stayed in Germany 15 years ago.

Poppy Seeds and all.......

It wouldn't be California with things like this....

So then we drove up the coast to Morro Bay State Park. Although it was the most expensive sleeping area of our trip.... I'd say it was worth it! We were 200 yards from the beach and some beautiful views!!! So the only airbed that we could depend on for this trip is our DELUXE airmattress Jason's parents gave us for Christmas last year. Needless to say...... we might need to get a bigger tent!

The beach was amazing!

It was some type of bird refuge....

View of the beach from our tent.

I had to laugh though at our "camping" situation. The week before we were backpacking 20 miles then this:

Since our tent was so filled with airbed there was literally maybe 14 inches between our faces and the tent ceiling.... it was quite the adventure getting used to at first.... but once we got used to it, it was great! We had talked about the old Disney Classic Swiss Family Robinson on our travels with Erica and Mark. Jason confessed he'd never seen it! We could not believe it! That movie molded my childhood probably more than any........ dreaming of riding Zebras, building tree houses, and oh the coconut bombs! Anyway, I actually had the movie downloaded on my laptop so we spent the rest of the evening, oh after our hot dog and salad dinner watching Swiss Family Robinson.

I know I know with the flash that ceiling looks super high. I promise it is almost hitting the top of the laptop!